After Threatening The Pirate Bay, Kanye West Accused Of Pirating Software

Just weeks after threatening The Pirate Bay with legal action over the pirating of his new album, Kayne West is now being accused of pirating himself. The current situation started with a tweet on West’s Twitter account. Accompanying the tweet was a picture of screenshot of West’s computer screen where he is apparently enjoying the sounds of Sufjan Stevens’ 2015 record,”Death With Dignity.” At first glance, the tweet appears harmless, but when you look in the background at the tabs that are open, it appears that West is not as against pirating as he appears to be.

Other open tabs on the computer’s Internet browser appear to be a page for Serum (a $200 “Advanced Wavetable Synthesizer” software program) and a search on The Pirate Bay for Serum. Another open tab pointed towards a Music Radar article listing the best VST/AU plugins, where Serum is listed as one of the winners. This makes it appear that West chose not to pay for the program and downloaded it illegally from The Pirate Bay instead.

Electronic artist deadmau5 (aka music producer and DJ Joel Thomas Zimmerman) noticed the open tabs in the picture and called out West on it. He called West a dick and later called for a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to help West pay for a legal copy of the software. Deadmau5 co-founded the company that produced the software.

Some are saying that West is a hypocrite for going after Pirate Bay after his new album was pirated when he was also pirating items he hadn’t paid for. Just last month, Kanye was reportedly considering legal action against The Pirate Bay after his new album “The Life Of Pablo” was reportedly pirated over 500,000 times in the hours after its release. On The Pirate Bay, it is still listed as the most popular music download after two weeks.

West and deadmau5 are both part of TIDAL’s founding class of artists taking a stand for increased artist compensation against illegal downloads and small streaming profits. Less than a year ago, they stood side-by-side in a show of anti-piracy solidarity for the splashy launch of the streaming service. Kanye told fans to download the service because his new album would only be released through the digital platform.

It was also noted that instead of using TIDAL to stream his favorite music by Sufjan Stevens, West was using YouTube to stream the songs. Another open tab was for MediaDownloader, a program used for ripping music from YouTube. The Pirate Bay team is also having fun at West’s expense, saying it welcomes pirates from all different walks of life and offering to provide West with tech support, if needed.

About Talia Ramos

Talia Ramos has been interested in the entertainment industry since she was a child. Movie reviews and entertainment news are Talia’s favorite subjects to cover and she is eager to find out everything about anything coming to a screen near you.